Abstract: Exemplary embodiments relate to techniques for presenting and targeting media in communications services. Media, such as live events, updates on a topic of interest, or digests of news sites or other content providers may be surfaced to a user in a number of ways; for example, an article view relating to the topic, a messaging view showing message threads, a media view showing interesting pieces of media, or in an active conversation based on analysis of a conversation and trending topics, such as news events. A system may suggest recipients that may be interested in discussing the content. The recipients may be presented in a ranked order based, for example, on an affinity or relationship of the recipients to a publisher of the content. Publishers may add or remove topics, and may set an end-time at which updates cease. The updates may be presented in a messaging thread.

Abstract: Techniques for ranking of selected bots are described. In one embodiment, for example, an apparatus may comprise a client front-end component operative to receive a bot contact display prompt from a client device; and send an ordered bot contact list to the client device; a bot contact list component operative to retrieve a bot contact list from a selection component, the bot contact list comprising a plurality of bot contacts; and a contact ranking component operative to determine a ranking weight for each of the plurality of bot contacts; and generate the ordered bot contact list by ordering the bot contact list based on the ranking weight. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method may include detecting a shared item in a message from a sharing user account to one or more receiving user accounts; matching the shared item to an entity; determining an augmentation element associated with the entity; generating an augmented shared item by augmenting the shared item with the augmentation element; and sending the augmented shared item to one or more receiving client devices associated with the one or more receiving user accounts. Other embodiments are described and claimed.